


Brass Pots and Black Beans

by anticyclone



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: Ambrose got a new familiar, Familiars, Family, Gen, Ghosts, Holidays, Post Season 2, but it's in spirit for Chilling Adventures, inaccurate representation of Roman holidays
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-07 09:40:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21455941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anticyclone/pseuds/anticyclone
Summary: "Of course it could all be hogwash." Aunt Hilda stood. "Maybe it's just an excuse to make us clean the brass cookware and force Zelda to stomp around in bare feet and throw black beans everywhere.""Yeah, that part is pretty weird," Sabrina agreed. "I really don't get it.""They liked black beans in Rome. Best not to question it."Ambrose has taken a break from hunting Blackwood to visit the Spellman homestead, just in time for Lemuria. A holiday the Spellmans haven't celebrated in years. It involves brass cookware, black beans, and midnight chants. Sabrina thinks it's all a little weird… until the angry ghost shows up.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 15
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Brass Pots and Black Beans

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Corbeaun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corbeaun/gifts).

"If Lemuria is so important, why did we never celebrate it before?" Sabrina asked.

"Because Blackwood didn't like it," Ambrose answered.

"Is that why you bothered to come back for this holiday, because Blackwood didn't like it?" Sabrina raised her eyebrows at the look Ambrose gave her. "What? It's a fair question."

On the kitchen table the egg timer went off. Ambrose pointed at the bronze skillet in Sabrina's lap. "I don't see paste on that," he said, and slid off the counter. He turned the egg timer off and took his own pan, also bronze, over to the sink to rinse off.

Sabrina grumbled and dug a handful of paste out of the bowl at her knee. She was sitting on the kitchen floor with the skillet in her lap and and yellow rubber gloves on her hands. The gloves weren't strictly necessary, but without it her fingers would smell like baking soda and lemon juice for the rest of the day. They needed three clean bronze pots and pans before nightfall and had already cleaned two. Or almost two, now that Ambrose was nearly done with his second.

Sighing, Sabrina plopped a scoop of paste onto the skillet and started scrubbing it across the bronze. Zelda had said the cookware needed to be _'clean enough to see our faces'_ in.

"I'm just saying," she said, after she'd thinned the paste out enough that she had to add more to keep going. At the sink Ambrose groaned under his breath. She ignored it. "You run off with Prudence for months. You don't write, you barely call, we have no idea where you are most of the time. Then you just… show up!"

"We didn't want to run the risk of anybody tracking us," Ambrose protested. Like he had the first time Sabrina had said this, when he'd shown up in the front hall yesterday morning.

Then Aunt Hilda had walked in, shrieked, and wrapped Ambrose up in an enormous hug. That had derailed all questioning about what Ambrose had been up to and why he'd come back now of all times. When Sabrina had tried bringing it up again at breakfast, Aunt Zelda had remembered about the bronze pots and how they'd been sitting in the pantry unused since the last time the Spellmans had celebrated Lemuria. Back when Sabrina's father had been alive.

"You could have used a pay phone."

"Pay phones are remarkably difficult to find outside of Greendale, cousin."

Sabrina made a face. She also gestured at the egg timer, which reset itself for twenty minutes. When it went off she could rinse the skillet.

"How did you even know we were going to celebrate Lemuria this year?"

Ambrose grabbed a rag and began drying off the pan he'd scrubbed. It gleamed under his hands. "Morgause told me."

"How did Morgause know? Morgause's a cat."

"Morgause's as much a cat as Salem is, you know that. Besides, she has a gift for seeing into the present. Very handy in a familiar."

Sabrina glanced back at the kitchen table. On one of the chairs Salem was curled up into a lightless black orb, tail curled underneath himself, nose tucked under one paw. It was really unbearably cute. It didn't help that Morgause, Ambrose's new familiar, a tortoiseshell cat, was sleeping with her chin on Salem's side.

"You leave for months, you don't call, you come back with the second-cutest familiar on the planet," Sabrina said, ignoring Ambrose's outraged sputtering on Morgause's behalf. "Now we're celebrating a holiday I've never even heard of."

"Cousin, I think you're just upset because you like knowing everything."

Sabrina spread her yellow-gloved hands. "Who doesn't like knowing things?"

Ambrose sighed and walked over to her. He bent and took her face in his hands, smooshing her cheeks a little. A small smile appeared on his face. "I missed you too, Sabrina."

"Lemme go," she mumbled, swatting at him and trying not to smear him with the paste stuck all over her gloves at the same time.

Ambrose obliged and took several steps backward. His smile slid into a grin. "I'm going to go take a nap."

"A nap! Aren't you leaving again in two days? You're here for less than a week and you want to take a nap."

"You do too," Ambrose told her. He paused by the cats' chair to scritch Morgause's head. In her sleep, her ears twitched. "We're all going to be up late tonight."

***

When Sabrina was finished with the skillet, she went upstairs to find Zelda already asleep, in a silk robe with an eye mask across her face. She was even snoring gently, though of course every Spellman knew better than to ever say that to her face. Sabrina sighed and stepped backwards, pulling the bedroom door shut.

"Time for all of us to take a little snooze," Aunt Hilda said.

Sabrina definitely did not jump three inches into the air. She turned to see Aunt Hilda in a soft robe, her face free of makeup for the moment. It made her look softer. Aunt Hilda smiled. "The ritual takes place at midnight and we'll eat after. Get some sleep while you can, dearie."

"I don't think I understand this holiday at all, Aunt Hilda."

Still smiling, Aunt Hilda walked over and gently nudged Sabrina forward, toward her bedroom. When they got there Salem was asleep on Sabrina's pillow. He opened his eyes and let out a long _mrrrp_ of offense when they sat down on the edge of the bed. Sabrina leaned over and picked him up. He hung limp in her hands like a rag and shot her a betrayed look. At least until she put him down in her lap.

"Do you ever wish you had a cuddly familiar, Aunt Hilda?"

Aunt Hilda blinked and made a soft sound under her breath. Then she reached over and booped Salem on the nose with a fingertip. Anyone else, including Sabrina, would've gotten nipped at. Aunt Hilda just got a long, slow blink from pale green eyes.

"I'm quite fond of the Multitude, actually," she said. "They may not be cuddly, but they're mine. We protect each other. Like family."

The spiders did have individual names - Sabrina wasn't quite sure how that worked, Aunt Zelda had told her once that the Multitude was one goblin split into many eight-legged bodies. Also, nobody but Aunt Hilda could tell them apart. (No matter what she claimed, Sabrina was positive Aunt Zelda didn't actually know which spider was which.)

"Besides." Aunt Hilda glanced sideways at her. Like she was sharing a secret. "When witches find out my familiar isn't some overfed toad, it makes them think twice."

"Salem," Sabrina said. The green eyes drifted over to her. "Do you make people think twice about me?"

Salem gave another slow blink, and Sabrina and Aunt Hilda both laughed.

_I make you look like a traditional witch._

"Oh, time to go to sleep, Sabrina." Aunt Hilda touched a hand to her hair and kissed her cheek.

"Can you explain this holiday to me one more time?" Sabrina begged. "Please?"

Aunt Hilda took a deep breath and folded her hands together in her lap. "Well, of course, the last time we celebrated it, Edward was here." She looked briefly sad. "It's an ancient holiday. An annual observance to drive out the malevolent dead from your home. Unwholesome spectres seeking retribution for whatever."

"We probably need that," Sabria said. She looked down at the floor, thinking about the mortuary.

"Not that kind of dead. Our own. Unhappy family. _Lemures._"

"But why would our own family be haunting us?"

"If we've… displeased them. Done something they wouldn't approve of."

Both of them were silent as they thought about what generations of Spellman witches might not like. Dissolving the Church of Night. Ousting its High Priest. Battling Satan Himself and conspiring with the damned soul of the first ever witch to crown Her as the new Queen of Hell.

"Dad wouldn't be _displeased,_" Sabrina mumbled. In her lap, Salem had started purring.

"There is a saying that if you've made your ancestors extremely proud, they might protect you. _Manes._ Blessed souls given, uh." Hilda fidgeted. Plucked at the fabric of her robe. "Given His dispensation to visit their families."

Another moment of silence passed. Sabrina considered whether Lilith would be inclined to let Edward and Diana visit. If they were even in Hell in the first place.

"Of course it could all be hogwash." Aunt Hilda stood. "Maybe it's just an excuse to make us clean the brass cookware and force Zelda to stomp around in bare feet and throw black beans everywhere."

"Yeah, that part is pretty weird," Sabrina agreed. "I really don't get it."

"They liked black beans in Rome. Best not to question it."

She got left the room, pulling the door shut almost all the way shut behind her. Sabrina sat in the sunlight and pet Salem, thinking. She was too tired to get up and pull the door closed. It probably didn't matter.

Maybe it was all hogwash. Maybe it was another stupid meaningless witch tradition that got cooked up to glorify Satan Himself and could be washed away in this new church Aunt Zelda was building.

Maybe she had actually made her parents proud, over the last year. Maybe she'd see them.

Salem looked up at her and chirped again.

Sighing, she fell back on the bed. Salem stretched and walked to his previous spot by taking the feline-direct route of walking straight up Sabrina's stomach, pressing his paws right between her ribs, and finally whacking her in the face with his tail before hopping back onto the pillow.

"You're right," she said. "I should've been nicer to Ambrose."

The door creaked behind her. Sabrina twisted around, but there was nothing there.

"I really do need a nap."

***

Being a familiar had its perks. Sure, a goblin had to squish itself into an animal form and keep it until the form expired (or was killed by another witch, although any goblin that got killed by a witch deserved it, in Salem's opinion). But being in animal form meant being in a house. And being in a house meant treats, because humans - even witch humans - couldn't keep an animal in close proximity and _not_ have a treat jar for it.

Sabrina rudely kicked Salem off her pillow, even though there had been plenty of perfectly good bed left for her to lay her head on.

He slunk out of the open bedroom door toward the kitchen. On a high shelf where the Spellmans thought he couldn't reach was a box of dried mouse paws.

Ha. Like anything a human could do - even a witch human - could keep a cat out of a box.

Salem padded down the stairs and halted with one paw in the air, just before the ground floor.

Something… was… wrong.

Without touching his paw to the floor, he leaned down from the last step to sniff. His whiskers twitched.

Several steps behind him Morgause let out a chirp. The kind cats use when they're stalking birds. Salem looked back at her and she walked down the stairs to sit next to him, her own nose twitching.

A set of wet footprints appeared on the floor in front of the staircase. The liquid was not water.

Salem hissed, arching his back, even while Morgause commented that he should _be less stereotypical, Salem._ But he was too busy spitting at the slowly-solidifying spirit in the air to say back, _I'm traditional on Sabrina's behalf._

The spirit wore a long dress, or what was a long dress before everything below the knees was shredded by something with claws. The spirit's legs looked fine and whole, underneath the blood. It coated her feet and dripped off the tattered remains of her skirt. Her face had a Sabrina and Hilda roundness to it when she crouched and held out one clawed hand.

"Here kitties, kitties," she whispered.

Salem swiped at her, claws out. Morgause licked her paw, haughty.

"Not your Spellman," the witch-spirit muttered, jerking her hand back like Salem had actually scratched her. "I'll show you what a real Spellman looks like-"

"Morgause!" called Ambrose's voice from the second floor.

The spirit vanished.

Salem spit one more time. Morgause turned and hopped up to meet Ambrose halfway down the stairs, chattering all the way.

Ambrose just scooped Morgause up and started carrying her back to the top floor. "Who said I wasn't a real Spellman? 'Course I am. Auntie Z? She's already asleep, like we should be," he said, pausing occasionally to let Morgause speak.

When Salem looked back at the floor, the bloody footprints were fading.

***

From the moment he laid down, Morgause kept walking back and forth over Ambrose's face.

"Morgause, please. Pleaaase. Look, I'm gonna get you. I'm gonna get you, alright? One, two…"

He clamped both arms around the cat the next time she walked over him and she let out a pitched meow, scrabbling at the pillow with outstretched claws. Her tail thwacked Ambrose in the eye.

"You sleep eighteen hours a day, can't this be one of them?" he begged. "I just need a nap - No, of course I'm listening to you. Auntie Z is _asleep._ I am not going to be the one to wake her up."

Then Morgause laid a warning bite to Ambrose's face. He sputtered. It was just the touch of teeth, like a mother cat to a misbehaving kitten, but Morgause was a familiar. It meant that there were quite a few teeth in her mouth, at least when she wanted them to be. Ambrose let go and Morgause yowled, kicking off the headboard to bounce across the floor.

She scrabbled to a stop in the doorway and hissed at him, pawing at it.

"If you want to wake Aunt Zelda up you can do it yourself," Ambrose announced, crossing his arms. He fell back against the pillows.

This was supposed to be relaxing.

A break, a holiday with family, before getting back to Prudence and the hunt for Father Blackwood. It has been a long stretch of months. Traveling was hard. There were witch houses they could stay in, sure, but they also needed mortal money, and mortal lodgings. Prudence was convinced that even now Blackwood would never stoop to mortal methods of things and Ambrose had to agree. The more time they spent in the mortal world, the better chance they had of remaining undetected as they closed in on Blackwood.

The fact that it was Lemuria was a coincidence, even though Morgause _had_ told Ambrose that Zelda wanted to celebrate it this year. It was also Agatha's birthday, and Prudence hadn't been willing to miss that.

Ambrose could have sworn he heard Morgause suck in a breath before howling at the door again.

This time, another meow answered from the other side.

"Fine, fine."

Since when had being in the Spellman family homestead been relaxing, anyway? He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed, then stomped across the room to open the door.

Salem and Morgause chittered at each other, something about _We can't wait_ and _The footprints are gone!_

Whatever that was supposed to mean.

"Satisfied?" Ambrose asked, when Morgause began weaving in and out of his legs.

The two cats both blinked up at him before darting down the hall toward Zelda's room.

Ambrose stuck a finger out at them. "You're lucky Vinegar Tom is dead, you hear?"

***

Zelda was not pleased to be woken up twenty minutes before her alarm would have gone off.

She was even less pleased that it was by two sets of meows and her nephew's sad attempts to pick up two cats at once. Sighing, she pulled the eye mask all the way off her face and tossed it over her shoulder. She didn't have to look to know it landed on the bed.

"Ambrose, stop. Even if they weren't familiars you can't pick up a cat who doesn't want to be picked up."

Ambrose stuck his hands in the pockets of his dressing gown and sighed. "I am sorry, Auntie Z. I told them you were sleeping, but they keep going on about bloody footprints-"

Zelda held up a hand. It snapped up without thought, and at their feet, both the familiars went quiet.

"Bloody footprints as in the expletive or bloody footprints as in the bodily fluid, Ambrose?" she asked.

Her ears strained. Pieces of trivia and witch lore rattled in the back of her head, her sleep-logged brain slowly waking up and pulling things together. Why would her ears… Ah, yes. The familiars were quiet now that she was paying attention. They were letting her listen to the house. Listen _for_ something.

Ambrose blinked. "Bloody…" He looked at the cats. "I just assumed…"

"Never assume anything on Lemuria, Ambrose."

Zelda lowered her hand and crossed her arms over her chest. She was in bare feet, but there wasn't time to go back for slippers.

"With me, and be ready to react at a moment's notice," she told Ambrose.

He nodded and fell in step behind her. The cats wove in between them and carefully avoided tripping either of them, which was how you knew they were familiars and not mortal felines. Dead giveaway.

Her nephew's footsteps were silent. Time away with Prudence and with a righteous mission had done him good. She would have to tell him that, later. It was important to let children know when they had done something praiseworthy.

And not that she would say this aloud, but she also needed to stop referring to Ambrose as a child. Even in her head. He was a strong witch and she had full confidence that together he and Prudence could rescue Judas and Leticia.

And bring her the head of Faustus Blackwood.

But that went without saying.

When they reached the end of the hallway the cats began to spit. Salem's back arched and Morgause's claws came out, her tail twitching erratically behind her. Ambrose brought both hands up, palms out, and Zelda uncrossed her arms.

The spirit of a Spellman long passed smoked into being at the bottom of the steps.

"Hello great, great, great-grandniece," the woman said.

"Sadilia Spellman," Zelda sighed.

"I'm impressed."

"I know my family tree," Zelda said. She flicked her hand dismissively.

The spirit laughed. It echoed through the house, and all the doors flung open simultaneously. The cats made twin unearthly noises and Salem vanished, a black blur leading back down the hall. Morgause leapt up and Ambrose had to struggle to catch her in the crook of one arm and keep one hand out in a defensive magical posture.

Hilda bustled out of her room, still in her robe. "What on Earth - oh, Lilith damn it," she said, spotting the ghost through the stair railing.

"We've got a visit from a _lemures,_ Hilda."

"Yes, I can see that." Hilda leaned over the railing and looked their ancestor up and down. "You'll be out of here soon enough, you will."

"Your brass pots and black beans," Aunt Sadilia spat.

"Our incantations and ancient magic," Zelda corrected.

Aunt Sadilia pointed a long, talon-nailed finger at her. "You think you can head the Church of Night, you-"

"The Church of Night has fallen," Zelda pronounced. The house shook, and all the doors slammed shut again. She put both her hands on her hips. "You can skulk around til midnight, Sadilia. Reflect on the fact that no other Spellman has risen with you."

"Yeah!" shouted Sabrina, running into the hallway with Salem in her arms. She skidded to a halt at Zelda's elbow, stared at Sadilia, and looked at Zelda. She mouthed, silent, _'Who is that?'_

"All of you are sad excuses for Spellmans," Aunt Sadilia said.

But she also vanished back into smoke. The front door swung open, then shut.

Zelda rolled her eyes. "Hilda, we need to put a little extra into that bucket of beans," she said, and began to descend the stairs. Traditionally it was only supposed to be blacked beans, but traditionally none of their dead relatives actually showed up to chastise them, anyway. And sure, she had overturned the hierarchy of the Church of Night. But she had done it _with_ family, which really should have exempted them all from this nonsense.

"Coming," Hilda said, walking after her. "We'll need…"

At the top of the stairs, Sabrina looked at Ambrose. "Who was that?"

"The dead, risen to punish us."

"Oh," Sabrina said. She absently scratched Salem's ears. "Just a normal day then."

***

Sadilia Spellman had been buried and dead (knowing the two did not necessarily go together, at least not at first) for many, many years. But even a witch in Hell for over two hundred years heard things. Like the overthrow of the Dark Lord and His replacement by a _witch,_ not even a _demon,_ or an avenging angel - just a witch, like any of them packed into the bowels of Hell.

Sure. A witch that had been in Hell longer than any other witch. But Lilith kept the near-corpse containing the Dark Lord's soul under glass, where anyone could see it.

News about how He had gotten there got around. Even to little witches like Sadilia who had never attained any glory in the Church of Night. When she'd heard that the temporary coup against Satan had been orchestrated by the same people who caused the collapse of the Church of Night, and that they were _Spellmans._ Oh.

Sadilia had oozed up through a crack between Hell and Earth like so much noxious smoke.

Now she drifted in long wisps of vapor over the graveyard. It was bigger than she recalled. The names on the gravestones weren't all familiar - relatives to seek out when she got back to Hell. Who were they to avoid her?

The Cain pit was still there. Sadilia tried sinking into it, but the open mouth was like a pane of glass. She bounced off.

Fine. Lemuria had called her back to the Earth. She couldn't have her body back, but she could make things difficult for these so-called self-declared Spellmans in the meantime.

When she reformed as a two-armed, two-legged, one-headed creature in a tattered, bloody skirt, with talons for nails, it was a few dozen yards into the field of graves. So when Sadilia Spellman stalked toward the grand home on the hill, she could see all four of the living Spellmans waiting for her.

She moved her fingers so the moonlight glinted off her long nails, and she smiled so it glared on her sharp teeth.

Zelda Spellman stood barefoot in a gauzy white gown with her hair lying plain against her shoulders. There was a cloth sack tucked into the curve of her arm, and she had a hand loosely clutching something. She watched Sadilia walk toward her and did not move.

On the porch stood Hilda, Ambrose, and Sabrina, all three holding gleaming brass pots and pans.

The two stupid familiars tracked her with all-black eyes, crouched at the feet of their witches. Sadilia glanced up and saw tiny pinpricks of liquid eyes, too many to count but coming in sets of eight, she was sure, sitting on the porch above Hilda.

She hissed and let her feet turn back to smoke so she could launch herself at speed across the yard. The graves fell away behind her and Sadilia raised both hands, talons high, ready to swipe across this upstart Zelda's face in some small sliver of revenge for the Dark Lord.

It wasn't until Zelda had already thrown the first handful of black beans that she realized the look on the living witch's face could best be described as boredom.

A dead witch gets very familiar with torment, in Hell. Boredom becomes a distant memory.

***

With the first toss of beans Zelda shouted, _"Haec ego mitto, his redimo meque meosque fabis,"_ and then in English, "These I cast, with these beans I redeem me and mine," for good measure.

The first of the beans hit Sadilia's spirit form square in the face. They left pockmarks of nothingness behind. The smoke making up her body vanished where she'd been struck, and she reeled back as if she'd been lit from beneath with hellfire.

"You dare strike me-" she spat.

Zelda just refrained from rolling her eyes. _"Haec ego mitto, his redimo meque meosque fabis!"_

Another toss of beans. Sadilia shrieked. Her face had taken the brunt of the second throw again. She threw her arms up before the third, and Zelda's shouted incantation, so the next set of wounds appeared there. Zelda had even managed to take out one of Sadilia's theatrically long nails, which made her smile.

"You might want to start moving, Zelda," Hilda called from the porch.

Zelda darted to the side. Sadilia slipped past her, skidded on the ground, and spun back to lunge at her again.

"If she was smart she would attack us," Sabrina said. Then, "Ow! Ambrose!"

"Don't give the evil ghost witch any ideas," Ambrose told her. Again: Something Zelda needed to remember to praise him for.

"I'm not," Sabrina muttered. Then she rapped her wooden spoon against her brass skillet in time with Zelda's zig-zag steps. That was a nice touch. Zelda would have to mention that later. Sabrina's voice rang when she yelled, "Ghosts of my mothers and ancestors, be gone!"

It was supposed to be _fathers_ and ancestors, but then they were facing Sadilia alone. And it had been the Church of Night that had propogated that particular tradition, back when Lemuria had still been celebrated as it ought.

Also, it was Sabrina. Even with a word off, there would always be a punch of magic to her words.

Sabrina, Hilda, and Ambrose yelled in time, "Ghosts of my mothers and ancestors, be gone!"

Zelda threw another handful of black beans. That made for five. Only four to go. At the ninth, Sadilia's strength would be sapped and she would dissolve back to Hell where she belonged.

Sadilia reared up. One side of her mouth was gone, now, to a hit from the black beans, but she could still let out an unearthly roar as her spirit form swelled and rose two feet into the air. Three. Six. Zelda backed up, eyes narrowed, calling _"Haec ego mitto, his redimo meque meosque fabis!"_ for the sixth time. 

Sadilia flung herself down at Zelda from a height.

Zelda screamed, _"Haec ego mitto, his redimo meque meosque fabis!"_ and whirled out of the way in time to avoid getting a talon to the eye but not in time to avoid getting scratched all together.

She winced but managed to catch herself on a gravestone so she didn't topple to the ground. Beans sloshed out of the cloth bag still clutched in one arm. Of course Hilda had overloaded it in the first place even before adding the extra protective herbs. There were far more beans than Zelda actually needed, she wasn't running low. It was just a slight disconcerting to hear beans crunch under her bare feet when she ducked out of the way of Sadilia rising back up.

The eighth call: _"Haec ego mitto, his redimo meque meosque fabis!"_

"You don't deserve to lead the Church!" Sadilia howled. "You're a pathetic excuse for a witch!"

"That must make you absolutely pitiful," Zelda said, flinging one last handful of beans and calling out for the ninth time, _"Haec ego mitto, his redimo meque meosque fabis!"_

The beans struck Sadilia across the throat.

For a split second Sadilia's spirit hovered above the yard, above Zelda. It was as tattered as her dress, with moonlight shining through her instead of staining her with blood. She was scattered with scores of wounds but the worst was her throat, all gone, so her head floated separate from her shoulders.

Then a wind stirred the trees and Sadilia vanished.

Zelda sighed and looked down at her feet. "The holiday manuals never mention having to pick all the beans up after."

"Oh, let the crows get them," Hilda said, already picking her way across the yard. "We can always use favor with the crows."

Zelda turned around. Her sister had left her brass pot on the porch. Ambrose and Sabrina were poking at the dirt in front of the steps like it would give them some hint as to Sadilia's magic, and the cats were separately and lazily grooming themselves. The Multitude has gone wherever it was the Multitude got to.

Hilda reached her side. There was a pair of shoes in her hand, and she crouched to help Zelda step into them.

"Uncooked beans are toxic to crows," Zelda reminded her. She may have put her hand on Hilda's shoulder for balance. Briefly.

Hilda looked up. Her nose scrunched in a smile. "They'll leave them for the crows they don't like then, won't they?"

Zelda shook her head, but she was smiling too. "Please tell me there's hot tea in the house."

"Of course there's hot tea, who do you think I am?"

***

"Both of you did very well today," Aunt Zelda told them, as she passed Sabrina the gravy.

Sabrina raised her eyebrows. Ambrose, who had already started eating his roast chicken, said nothing.

All four of them were at the table. The Multitude had gone back to their glass cages to sleep. Sabrina thought they were satisfied about how the Lemuria ritual went down. She'd spotted several happy-looking little webs left behind on the porch. In the morning she would need to remember to check them for lightning bugs, flies, and goblin eggs.

Aunt Zelda busied herself with buttering a roll. It turned out that an after-Lemuria-ritual dinner was a lot like mortal Thanksgiving dinner, except that Aunt Hilda had insisted there not be turkey. There also wasn't any cranberry sauce, but after watching Sadilia leap around the yard with her dress and legs all stained with blood, Sabrina was not especially hungry for cranberry sauce.

"I feel like I didn't help much," Sabrina finally said. She ladled gravy onto her mashed potatoes and passed the boat along to Aunt Hilda. "You were the one out there fighting our great-great-great-great-great aunt."

The angry cut along Aunt Zelda's neck, where Sadilia had caught her with a claw, was hidden under a green-tinged poultice. Sabrina had asked whether ghost nails carried ghost bacteria and just gotten a look in response.

Ambrose swallowed his chicken. "That's too many greats."

"How would you know?"

"I looked Sadilia up in the family tree."

"Children," Aunt Zelda said, patiently. Then she paused, set her knife down, and let out a breath that wasn't exactly a sigh. She gave them a smile. Aunt Zelda had been smiling a lot more these past months than she had during the awful ones following Sabrina's dark baptism. "No, my apologies. You're both making fine adults. Sabrina, the touches you put on your end of the ritual were quite nice. You may not have been battling Sadilia hand-to-hand, but the rhythm you used for beating the brass skillet was helpful."

Aunt Hilda passed her sister a bowl of haricots verts. "And I think the substitution of _mothers_ for _fathers_ gave our magic that extra kick, dear."

Sabrina blinked. "Thank you."

Aunt Zelda looked at her nephew. "And Ambrose, you haven't been here, but I trust you know Hilda and I are quite proud of the efforts you've been making since embarking on this quest with Prudence."

Ambrose's eyes widened. He sat there, a scrap of chicken stuck to his knife, for a long moment. Then he managed to return Zelda's smile. "Thank you, Auntie Z."

"Of course, you could call more often…"

"I already told Sabrina," he said, his smile sliding into a grin. "Greendale has given you all the impression that the world has a _lot_ more pay phones than it actually does."

By the time they were all done eating, Aunt Zelda looked so tired that Sabrina didn't even mind offering to put everything away. Ambrose jumped up to help her with the dishes. Aunt Hilda looped her arm through her sister's and the two of them started up the stairs, talking about Lemuria celebrations they remembered from when they were children. Aunt Hilda made some remark about touching up the poultice on Aunt Zelda's wound first thing in the morning.

When she had put aluminum foil over the last dish and started drying the pile Ambrose had washed clean, Sabrina finally figured out what it was she wanted to say.

"I think I'm jealous," she said.

Ambrose stopped, his wrists submerged in hot, soapy dishwater. "I can dry," he said, slowly.

"Not of doing dishes." Sabrina rolled her eyes. "I think I was upset this morning because I'm jealous. You got to leave Greendale. Explore the world."

"To hunt down Blackwood, who definitely wants to disembowel me, so we can rescue two helpless infants," Ambrose reminded her.

Sabrina put down a clean glass and picked up another. "I know. And I know you already got to explore the world, before you got locked up here, and you were here for way too long and it was awful," she said. "And you deserve to get out! You really do. Of all of us, Ambrose Spellman deserves to get to leave Greendale."

The smile on Ambrose's face was mildly confused, but happy. "Thanks."

"I'm happy you're back," Sabrina said, definitively, and the confusion fell away from Ambrose's smile. "Even if it's only for a few days. And you really should call more often."

"I keep telling you about pay phones-"

She bumped their shoulders together and said, "Fine. Postcards."

"I'll send you a postcard when we rescue Leticia and Judas if you get Salem to tell Morgause when you've rescued Nick."

"Deal," Sabrina said. And then, because Ambrose _was_ family: "My news will come first."

"Want to bet on that, cousin?"

***

The thing about _manes_ was that most people had forgotten what it was like. It took a lot of power, and a lot of love, for a proud ancestor to revisit the Earth. Hate and spite fueled most ghostly manifestations.

So it was often the case that a blessed spirit arrived late, if they arrived at all. That didn't get noted down in the history books or in the records of the Church of Night. Of course the people writing the records for the Church of Night also weren't the kind of people likely to be visited by any _manes_ in the first place, which didn't help.

The point being, all the Spellmans were asleep when their _manes_ drifted through the front door.

Except Salem and Morgause, who purred, wound their way among ghostly legs, and both got ear scritches for their troubles. Salem tried to convince Diana to get the treat jar down because Edward didn't look as susceptible to feline charm. He failed, but only because goblins have a shaky understanding of how solid a ghost's hands are.

Sabrina, Ambrose, and Hilda slept soundly and had sweet dreams.

Late morning sunlight woke Zelda. She slid out of bed and went straight to the sink to wash the stiff poultice off her throat. She was already planning on asking Hilda if the next one could be applied more thinly - it stuck to her skin and took some scrubbing to get off. Ghost-inflicted wounds were notorious for infections and taking ages to heal and Zelda was not looking forward to it.

But when the poultice had been washed away, Zelda found that her injury had healed in her sleep. Like it was never there in the first place.


End file.
